AI Literacy, Equity & Empowerment: A Conversation with Dr Juliana Peloche

In this episode Natalie McMaster speaks with Dr Juliana Peloche, Senior Learning Advisor and AI researcher, about her unique journey into the world of artificial intelligence in education.

In this podcast Juliana discusses the importance of AI literacy—not only for students, but for academics who are often underprepared to guide AI use in classrooms. She emphasizes the need for cross-sector collaboration, referencing hybrid forums and stakeholder engagement as essential for meaningful progress in the AI and education space.

As a strong advocate for gender equity, Juliana reflects on the continued underrepresentation of women in AI development and policy conversations. She shares candid observations from her research and professional experience, offering thoughtful insights on how women’s voices—and their absence—are shaping AI futures.

This episode is a must-listen for educators, researchers, and policymakers navigating the fast-evolving intersection of AI, learning, and equity. Juliana’s story is both inspiring and grounding, offering a practical yet hopeful roadmap for those committed to building more inclusive digital education landscapes.

Resources

2025 EDUCAUSE Horizon Report | Teaching and Learning Edition | EDUCAUSE Library

This is little about Polycrisis through the lenses of an Australian I admire: Talks

Please, please! Let's avoid the calculator analogy now - EduResearch Matters

Technical Democracy - Conference Presentations (hybrid forums presentation from Simon Buckingham-Shaw)

Transcript

Natalie McMaster  

Hi, listeners, it's Natalie again, from the AARE Technology and Learning SIG. And today will be talking to Juliana Peloche, a senior learning advisor at an Australian university. So welcome today, Juliana.

Dr Juliana Peloche
Thank you so much, Natalie. Such a pleasure to be here today. Thanks for the invite.

Natalie McMaster
So could we start by you telling us a little bit about your background? I've heard that it's really diverse. How did you end up in A.I. research?

Dr Juliana Peloche
I think I'm one of the victims of project based learning. So I was teaching it at an  International School in Brazil about eight years ago and one of the projects that these kids had in Year five. And I had this student. He was really a tricky one.
The one that is always like you've always on your tip toes not knowing what's coming. He was the son of a multinational company in Brazil and he came to me, he said, ‘Well, my group and I’ and I knew it didn't come from the group. It came from him. ‘My group and I would like to study how A.I. will be introduced in education.’

Natalie McMaster
Wow.

Dr Juliana Peloche

And I was like, ‘What!’ So imagine that this is 8 years ago. There was no generative A.I. There was nothing and this student from year five comes with this idea. And I was like ‘A.I. in Education, you think this is going to be a thing? And he was like, ‘Yep, I do miss. I do.’ And I think out of the the group members, I was the most interested in the topic. I think this is really going to be a thing. ‘Do you mind if I use your topic?’ ‘No.’ ‘Let's research together.’ So that's how I started. I ended up just submitting a proposal to a university here, being accepted and start researching A.I. in education.

Natalie McMaster
Oh my goodness, what a wonderful story. So now that you're working at Edith Cowan University, can you tell us what this is like and how it's connected to your research?

Dr Juliana Peloche
It's very connected and this was one of my concerns because my PhD wasn't a very easy one. I think no one's PhD is. But I started about six years and a half ago, so there was no generative A.I. So, the A.I. was studying was the raw A.I. So I was struggling to find participants. I was struggling to actually frame A.I., because it was so hidden. It was so hard for us to see where A.I. could be embedded. The journey change it completely. It changed it twice, because once was during COVID.  COVID hit and I had to change completely my research. So from our phenomenography, I had to go to Delphi study, changed the participant, changed everything. When I was about to finish, generative A.I. came to place and I was like oh, hang on. I don't know if my data is valid anymore because what people responded to with this data. Was the answers for this hidden A.I and I we have generative I very accessible for everyone. What am I going to be working with if everyone now is an expert in A.I? Like what am I going to be doing? I wasn't really sure. And then when I was towards the end, we start applying for jobs and I said, you know what, this Senior Learning Advisor job seems to be very aligned with what I want. And the reason I was hired was because this university wanted to change the way they were supporting it’s students. So they used to have these learning this learning platform offered to students for feedback and it was a human kind of thing. So you submitted your assessment to this platform, we they had reviewers that would give you some kind of feedback. You could improve your writing, general feedback and some more focused one. So they were saying that the kind of feedback the students were getting, was not exactly what students wanted. And they thought that maybe using some other tool, generative AI tool, could possibly replace this other service, and be way more cost effective.

So my job when I was hired was to kind of create guidance for students of how to use this this Gen A.I. tool.And the biggest obstacle that we found at the beginning was that because these other tool that the university adopted was not educational, we had a huge issue with the services, the kind of feedback, that they were completely different. Of course they work 24/7 accessible for students. This was a great benefit for students. But we had many, many different issues. Such as the Gen A.I. tool,  for example if they sent an essay, the Gen A.I. would rewrite the entire essay to the student.

Natalie McMaster
Ohh, that's problematic isn't it?

Dr Juliana Peloche
That's very problematic because I always like putting myself in the student’s shoes. I would just copy and paste, because it sounded so much better. So, it's really problematic. But that was why it was hired initially just to help with this transition between one tool to the other.

Natalie McMaster
And has it going now?

Dr Juliana Peloche
We still find so many obstacles. I had proposed to the University for us to try some kind of A.I. tutor that is more academic focused. So they are built for education and not one general tool that you know anyone can have access. But cost has always been an issue. I think these models are kind of decreasing in price, they still pretty expensive when you put them at scale. For the moment and this happened a couple of weeks ago, we had to revise all the resources that we created for this transition because, students could actually understand to them as cheating. We are at the moment redesigning all the resources and putting learning in the centre, and helping students realise how they can use these tools, even though they are not educational, they're not built for Education. How they can actually improve their skills, their capabilities through the use of these tools. So instead of just copy and paste, what is it that you could be doing with that output to develop your skills. That's the tricky thing, because we are trying to make a tool that is not educational an educational one.  So it really depends on the way you use. So that comes to play, like we're going to be talking about A.I. literacy, right? If your students understand what's behind and what they are missing out, if they are just copying and pasting without having a critical eye through the output. If we show them this, then you know, our job's done. Like now they can engage with it in a different way.  The problem is that we are counting on academics that do not manage the tools that well yet. How are we going to equip these academics with knowledge that they can, you know, help students or guide students through the use. This is this is our biggest obstacle at the moment.

Natalie McMaster
Oh, it's so interesting, isn't it? And it's, you know, so problematic. It's not just in the university sector either. We hear similar sort of stories from schools as well with, how to manage it. I guess, how do you see A.I. playing a role in education and more precisely in research then?

Dr Juliana Peloche
I think that the most important thing that we have to talk about Is A.I. literacy. I saw this in my research as well. Because I interviewed 3 different groups in my thesis. So school level teachers, K-12. I interviewed developers of A.I. tools and I interviewed curriculum leaders. And the dialogue among them was very different. We are going into this unknown place, with people with completely different goals. With completely different perceptions of these tools. Teachers want students to learn. Curriculum leaders want the teachers to teach the curriculum, and developers want to sell the tools. So how are we going to navigate this? I went to participate in a round table at UTS. And Simon Buckingham-Shaw was there and he came with his idea of hybrid forums. And I was like ‘yes!’ Hybrid forums is pretty much like, you join people from different backgrounds. So you join all these stakeholders that are involved in that kind of matter. So let's say A.I. in Education, what are these stakeholders involved in this? And it shouldn't be only the ones that I interviewed. And that's kind of something that I put it in my research limitations because I needed to hear parents. I needed to hear school leaders. You know, I needed to hear the other stakeholders involved in this. What do we want and how are we going to work together? 

So we make sure that it's not one player ruling the game. As we can see now that is happening with EdSpecs. They produce and we use. We try to use that technology to fit our context. Really changing our context to kind of use the technology where it should be the opposite. We should be using that technology because it helps us in our context. Right, in our pedagogy. I think it's the first time in history that we as educators could have like the power of getting together, united and say, ‘hang on! This is how we want the game going.’ But we're not doing this. Unfortunately, we are kind of surviving in this territory that is quite overwhelming for everyone because it moves so fast.

Natalie McMaster
And it's more sort of reactive than proactive as well, isn't it?

Dr Juliana Peloche
That's right. That's been our approach with technology. We're not going slowly, as Rose Luckin asks us. She says ‘learn fast and act more slowly.’ Learn fast because these tools change everyday. But when it comes to education, instead of being reactive, just act slowly, thinking about the consequences, that we still don't know which are.

Natalie McMaster
So you've mentioned, Rose. And I've heard that you're a great advocate for women in this field. Do you want to talk a little bit more about that?

Dr Juliana Peloche
I have to mention Rose. I should have mentioned Rose before Simon. I really admire her work. She's one of the people that I agree is an expert in A.I. She's been working with A.I. for more than 30 years. And the fact that she's a woman persevering in this field for over 30 years, I just, yeah, she's really amazing. We have to start thinking about the consequences of not having the women's voice in this space, all the bias that we see, increasing in data sets. So every time I have an opportunity, I just try to give any woman just a little push and said, ‘yeah, you go, you go.’

Natalie McMaster
And did you see this same sort of lack of representativity during your research?

Dr Juliana Peloche
Yes. So, as I said, I had the three groups right? So developers were 100% men. Curriculum leaders were 60% men. And for the teachers that I interviewed, I had a good balance. But in Secondary teacher it was mainly men and in Primary teacher women. That's one of the limitations I have in my research as well, because I I had to say I really looked for balance, gender balancing both in all the groups and I just couldn't find.

Natalie McMaster
So how does Australia focus on a I differently or similarly to the rest of the world?

Dr Juliana Peloche
Australia is completely different to the rest of the world. It's just from my experience.

Natalie McMaster
Yeah. In what way?

Dr Juliana Peloche
Let's talk about a very good example that I gave on the on my presentation on Tuesday as well. I was asking the parents to answer this question. “How do you opt out to the AI responses you have when you Google something on your phone?” So how do you opt out? And I think there was close to 100% in saying “I don't know, but I would love to.” The answer was like ‘you can't.’ There is no way for you to opt out in Australia. I see A.I. way less developed here. I don't think there is this maturity in A.I use in education here. And I'm not talking about K12, I'm talking about university levels. I don't see universities here  positioning themselves or coming with a road map for A.I. use. I don't see this here.

Natalie McMaster
So in terms of your research, how's that informing your work now in the role that you've got?

Dr Juliana Peloche
I really think that it informs what I do now. My role is to support students and staff, so having staff coming to me and say ‘Oh, can you please come to my class and help my students because I don't know, and I don't have time to know. Because it is overwhelming to keep on top of things in A.I. I see A.I. in education as a big umbrella. Under this umbrella there are many different silos. And these silos are the faculties. What applies to one, doesn't apply to the other. We have different speeches. We have different dialogues. I really love what I do at the moment. It's been a journey.

Natalie McMaster
Ohh, that's wonderful Juliana. Thank you so much for talking to us today.
It's been lovely to hear about your journey and how your research was some of the first research about A.I. in Education, before generative A.I. came about and everybody sort of knew about it. It's wonderful to hear that you know that work that you've done is actually really helping you with your role in higher education as well.

Dr Juliana Peloche
Yeah. And I hope I can continue learning and helping our beautiful academics and institutions in Australia. Thank you so much for having me Nat. It's been really lovely to talk to you.

Natalie McMaster
You too Juliana, we'll talk again soon. Thank you so much. Bye for now.